In Paris, the Meek Inherit the Runways

The Hermes show in Paris.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Paris

THERE is a great deal about Thom Browne’s miniature fashion that is cloying, like — well, like a million things one can name these days. But people have hung in there just the same. If you perform the exercise of who designed a style first, Mr. Browne would certainly get credit for the game changer of tailored shorts and shrunken blazers on males over 10.

That’s the beauty of fashion: Insist on something long enough, and everybody will think it’s their idea.

As the setting for Mr. Browne’s first Paris show, the French Communist Party headquarters offered the American designer a good built-in joke. Fashion is also doctrinaire, and based on the number of Zaras and Gaps on street corners, it seems to be on its way to world domination. At close range, here in Paris, with the conceit of a diplomatic summit, Mr. Browne’s uniformity owed less to the United States as Camelot than to the blunt aesthetic of an East German housing block. It had a certain authority.

Photo

Raf Simons.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

As editors sat at rows of long tables in a slanted assembly room, Mr. Browne repeated the same signature jacket and pair of shorts, changing the fabrics — seersucker, stripes, plaids, solids embroidered with small fish or sharks. The models, all wearing gold-mirrored sunglasses and a smear of gold glitter on their lips, had their hair pasted down like the Beaver on Sunday. They looked nerdy but dangerous somehow.

Ultimately it was a good showing for the Thom Browne flag, and chatter about the gold sunglasses was on Twitter. The show, which had opened with a waltz, ended with Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Hearing it, a few people in the room must have thought of Raf Simons’s 1998 show — also in the summer, but held outdoors at dusk before a giant silver ball that reflected both the surrounding neighborhood and a long union line of boys in slim black suits. It was one of those shows, so artfully and simply presented, that struck a generational chord.

But how many remember something like that now? Two years is suddenly an eternity in fashion, and the economic crisis has made everyone, retailers and designers, extremely competitive. The most sophisticated talents now know that they can’t exist without the mainstream. Cool is a ghetto. So Karl Lagerfeld lends his image to a bottle of Coke or is guest editor of the newspaper Libération, which saw a sales increase of 40 percent.

Photo

John Galliano.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

The Paris spring men’s shows, which ended on Sunday, retain a reputation for creative freedom, though there seems to be a lack of bold thinking. For some designers, the hook of a single idea worked. Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons reproduced the human skull as wallpaper prints on cotton, as mesh-embedded cutouts on the back of jackets, and as an inspiration for fake-leather blazers reduced to skeletal strips.

You imagine the thought process for a John Galliano show going something like, “Let’s do Charlie Chaplin and Luchino Visconti on the sands of the Lido!” The references are usually groaners — and it doesn’t much matter since the results come out the same. Still, this time, Mr. Galliano’s mix of undersize jackets and oversize pants — low in the crotch and at the waist and held up with suspenders — made a sharp impression.

BUT men are having a hard time, as Hanna Rosin observed in an article in the current issue of The Atlantic, its tag line, “How women are taking control — of everything.” Men are wimping out, in the example of Judd Apatow’s chronic adolescent characters, or being mowed down by Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

Photo

Yves Saint Laurent.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

You sensed a little of this problem at the shows, and it was not a pretty sight. Stefano Pilati, the Saint Laurent designer, reverted to a drowsy Paul Bowles sexuality, with delicate young men in even more delicate-looking knits and high-waist shorts that rippled over skinny legs. If you saw a guy with a little fez tipped over his brow, what would you think? How fast can he set up my chair by the pool?

I wanted to like Riccardo Tisci’s laces for the Givenchy man. I really did. There was something interesting about the mock Victorian elegance he seemed to be working, without the reliance on literal references. And there’s a footballer’s bulk to his silhouette, which is at least a consistent point of view for him. And I certainly have no gripe with his skirts, which are actually shorts with a flap in front. Shorts that suggest skirts were a trend of the collections. Rather, my problem with Mr. Tisci’s clothes is that his process seems too heavy-handed, without enough perspective and finesse that might make the results just a little more real.

Buyers praised what Nickelson Wooster, the men’s fashion director of Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, called “the crisper, cleaned-up look” of clothes, a shift from washed fabrics. The amount of white in the collections — at Raf Simons, Hermès, Ann Demeulemeester — added to the fresher look. Mr. Wooster also liked the trend of sleeveless jackets and tops; it was a big theme at Lanvin, Dior, Rick Owens and Mr. Simons, who opened with a sleeveless scubalike jacket zipped over full white cotton trousers.

Photo

Lanvin.Credit
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Sarah Lerfel, an owner of the influential Colette boutique in Paris, was less impressed, though. She told me when I caught up with her that she didn’t think the spring shows had so many new ideas. She was particularly, if reluctantly, critical of Mr. Simons’s collection.

“It’s not the Raf I understand,” said Ms. Lerfel, who found the use of zippers — set in wide black strips and worked into the front or backs of jackets and cotton tunics — tricky.

“Maybe I am too old,” she said with a laugh, “but for me it was not mature.”

Mr. Simons wanted to reflect on his 15 years in fashion and on the collection that influenced him to become a designer — Martin Margiela’s 1989 show that made use of plain fabrics and everyday materials like tape. The loose, zippered shirts, as well as the scuba fit and extra volumes, also indicated that Mr. Simons wanted to do something that was a bit experimental. He has taken some knocks on blogs in recent seasons that, in focusing on tailoring, he has lost some of his avant-garde edge. Yet those suits were plenty inventive. They were just more subtle than what he showed the other night.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

For Mr. Simons, the creative process is as personal as it can be, and not too many designers have the emotional range, or nerve, for his level of self-expression. It may be that some of the ideas in his latest collection are not immature but rather in a raw, early stage of development. That in itself is a remarkable thing in a leading designer — that he still feels free in all the modern prisons of fashion.

Kim Jones sent out a fine collection for Dunhill, emphasizing a slim, fluid fit and subtle shadings of gray.

All in all, I thought Véronique Nichanian of Hermès seemed the most relaxed of anybody. She had those whites and creams, the season’s new-new double-breasted jacket and a nice slacker vibe. Whatever troubles men today, it was of no concern to her.

A version of this review appears in print on July 1, 2010, on Page E5 of the New York edition with the headline: In Paris, the Meek Inherit the Runways. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe